The Shape of Knowledge – review of ISKOUK event

I was particularly fascinated by the ideas suggested by Martin Dodge of mapping areas that are not “space” and what this means for the definition of a “map”. So, the idea of following the “path” of a device such as a phone through the electromagnetic spectrum brings a geographical metaphor into a non-tangible “world”. Conversely, is the software and code that devices such as robots use to navigate the world a new form of “map”? Previously, I have thought of code as “instructions” and “graphs” but have always thought of the “graph” as a representation of coded instructions, visualized for the benefit of humans, rather than the machines. However, now that machines are responding more directly to visual cues, perhaps the gap between their “maps” and our “maps” is vanishing.